


And the Fourteenth Knife was Missing that Night

by InaudibleTacit



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Insanity, Jason's a twin, Murder, Suspense, What'd you expect?, Why Did I Write This?, as much as you can get in 1000 words, but this is much darker, i can't ecsape him, i cant believe i wrote this, i swear this was made by a completely sane person, its inspired by Brandon Sanderson, sooo dark, this is dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:05:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17738702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InaudibleTacit/pseuds/InaudibleTacit
Summary: "The cheap cutlery set had a total of fourteen knives, and now, only thirteen remained, the empty hole screaming at Willis."Willis and Catherine, the two didn't have much, but they were willing to try, but it was Gotham, and its mad, cruel claws could never keep a good thing going for too long.(a.k.a., throwing cannon out the window and trying a much darker version of Jason's mom's death)





	And the Fourteenth Knife was Missing that Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is messed up, and I should be sleeping, so cya. (also I applaud anyone who can make a decent story in a day never proofreading it, like how???)
> 
> but thanks for reading anyway, I hope it gives you your daily dose of heavy, bigtime angst

A bang. A scream. A rustle. The silence. A scream. A whimper. A bang. The silence. A rustle. A tussle. A bustle. The silence. And on and on it goes. 

 

Nights in Gotham repeated much the same, an endless cacophony of bangs, screams and movement oriented in a new fashion every night. Chaos. Gotham was a lovely, disgusting chaos. With its horrors, it’s pain, it's repulsiveness, Gotham still clung to life like a cockroach. The city thrived but did not thrive. It lived but did not live. 

 

Willis saw no man, no woman, no animal, nor any discernible being as living--despite the traces of squirming, abhorrent rodents that scampered unwelcomed through the unkempt scraps of Gotham--in either of his peripherals nor in his direct sight. Could the clamors be real at all?

 

Gotham was a mad city. The dissonance emitting off of every building, every streetlight, every beam of metal and plank of wood could easily be mistaken as one’s own insanity, though a Gothaminite’s soundness of mind fluctuates hourly. Was Gotham mad? Or were all living within it mad? A little bit of both? No one would ever truly know.

 

Then, Silence. 

 

Not  _ the silence.  _ Silence. Complete, utter, encompassing silence that froze even the slightest of movements. Willis felt ringing in his ears and the beginnings of vertigo. But he trudged forward like a moth to a flame, unable to turn away. He could no longer hear his footsteps, his breathing, his heartbeat. Silence. 

 

Gotham was waiting. Gotham was holding its breath. Gotham was watching Willis. 

 

_ Something is different, something big will change tonight,  _ Willis thought, Willis  _ knew _ . It was like a voice, like Gotham, whispering in his head:  _ “Your move,” _ in a game of chess, where Willis was a single moment from checkmate, but was too ignorant to see the correct move to win, to  _ achieving  _ something. Something he couldn't understand. 

 

And just like that, Gotham retreated from his mind like a snake being whipped, leaving Willis staring at a door,  _ his  _ door. Where Catherine and his young twins lived. 

 

He hadn't thought much as he opened the door, mindful of the eerie creak it produced regularly. His head felt shrouded in a mildly dark grey, giving him shocking clarity, yet almost completely absent of any room for contemplation. It was the oddest of things. 

 

Subconsciously, though, adrenaline pulse through his veins, steering his mind like a camera, snapshotting even the slightest of details and searching for inaccuracies.  

 

There. 

 

A knife was missing. 

 

The cheap cutlery set had a total of fourteen knives, and now, only thirteen remained, the empty hole screaming at Willis. 

 

And Catherine was not in the kitchen. 

 

Which destroyed any possibilities of her using it to cook, and left her either using it as a defense mechanism or someone else using it for an offensive mechanism. 

 

And then the giggling started.

 

Willis’s head snapped to the bedroom instinctively. A woman’s giggling. From the  _ children’s  _ bedroom. The knife. The giggling. The children. Catherine. He moved. Appearing as a lion stalking its prey, Willis slunk toward the towering doorway. 

 

An unusual feeling crept upon him, one of foreboding. This room held secrets. And eavesdropping outside had a simple air of allure. Very often did anyone wish for something of intrigue to end abruptly, for the most thrilling moments are just around the climax. Like a book. Reading to the pinnacle of the excitement is the best part, but once one reads it, one will never truly be satisfied with it, as it brings the knowledge that the resolution would soon come. 

 

_ This is it, isn't it? The moment before the climax? The paradigm shift? Standing here, this is the last moment I will get as the man I am, _ he thought. 

 

Reaching for the doorknob, he hesitated. His mind was whirring, trying to process the events that would unfold before they do despite the grey cloud surrounding his mind.  _ “Come inside,”  _ Gotham beckoned, lulling him, and he fell back into a state of minimal thinking and maximum attention. 

 

The giggling turned to full-blown laughter.

 

And he slammed opened the door. 

 

There were two outcomes in his head. Two outcomes in which the knife was used for. One: Someone had attacked his family, and Catherine had the knife for protection. Two: The attacker had the knife, and was trying to use it on his family. 

 

But there was a third outcome. 

 

One he hadn't even considered. Because there is _ no possible way  _ that it could be true. 

 

But it  _ was _ . 

 

Catherine was sitting in the barren room tenderly combing her fingers down their baby boy’s scalp. She laughed, saying, “My little baby. My little prince,” over and over, slowly rocking back and forth. The infant’s hand was held loosely around the mother’s thin pointer finger as she cooed at him. 

 

The child’s eyes drifted to Willis, and what he was seeing finally registered. 

 

Red. 

 

So much red.

 

Never would Willis had thought that a body as small as the thing that had produced so much red could actually withhold all of it. 

 

No, not red, and no, not thing. 

 

It was  _ blood.  _ Blood from  _ his child.  _

 

Scattered across the room were _pieces_ \-- _limbs_ _skin_ , _organs--_ of _his child_. The boy was completely fine, but the girl… she was… she was dead, wasn't she?

 

And in Catherine's hand lay the source. 

 

The missing knife. The missing, bloody knife.

 

No, no, could Catherine have dared? Why? Why? Why? What had happened to the beautiful woman he had fallen for? The woman who was scared but willing. Willing to raise their children despite everything.  _ Where  _ was  _ Catherine _ ?  _ His  _ Catherine. 

 

Anger. Fury.  _ Rage.  _

 

Blue. 

 

Among the waves of red was blue. Two small, child eyes reflecting the clearest of oceans. 

 

Willis’s resolve strengthened.

 

And he attacked. 

 

His muscles tensed as he sprinted through his daughter’s blood, instantly screaming to stop the sacrilege deed he was committing. And, he could listen. Could drop to the floor and sob, could call the police and let his monster of a wife rot. 

 

_ They’d send her to Arkham.  _

 

He didn't want that. He wanted her to  _ feel  _ his child’s pain, not to be sent to an  _ asylum _ . No, she deserved worse. 

 

He could-- _ would  _ live with this. 

 

Catherine’s neck was warm, soft, and  _ covered  _ in blood. 

 

He grabbed that tender skin and slammed her head on the floor, jostling the child and dropping her knife. 

 

He  _ squeezed,  _ choking her, uncaring of the gasps and pained look in her eyes. He didn’t want excuses, he didn’t want explanations, tears, he wanted  _ retribution.  _

 

Willis hadn’t even realized he had his pocket knife clutched in hand until he  _ rammed  _ it through her thin, delicate, evil hand--the hand that killed his baby girl. 

 

She screamed. 

 

Willis turned as the woman--no,  _ thing  _ that disguised itself as a lady, as a woman he had grown to  _ love _ \--squirmed and whimpered, tenderly picked up his boy, placing him in his crib that he had made just months before and began his work. 

 

Catherine's screams saturated Gotham. 

 

He didn’t see the boy behind him watching. He didn’t see the horror he had inflicted on his child. He didn’t see how the image of his sister and then mother being murdered had seared itself into his mind. Willis didn’t see, and, frankly, he didn’t care. 


End file.
